Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Saving Earth: Asteroid Emergency Tabletop Exercise at the 2013 PDC

Episode Date: May 6, 2013

The last installment of our Planetary Defense Conference coverage makes a deep impact as hundreds of attendees participate in an asteroid mitigation exercise. You’ll hear from astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweikart, Near Earth Object expert Don Yeomans, Cathy Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and many more.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join us as we save the Earth, or die trying, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with the final installment of our Planetary Defense Conference coverage, and it's the most exciting yet. In a couple of minutes, we'll join a group of scientists, engineers, and others who've been told they need to figure out how to keep a huge asteroid from hitting our home planet. We'll hear from astronauts Ed Lewin, Rusty Schweikert of the V612 Foundation, Don Yeomans of JPL, Kathy Plesko of Los Alamos National Labs, and many more in this extended online version of the show. Emily Lakdawalla is away this week, but Bruce Betts is here for another installment of What's Up, this time with special guest Mike Puzio and his father.

Mike is the nine-year-old who just won the contest to name the asteroid that will be visited by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. We'll begin our journey with Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. Bill, I want to start by acknowledging what is just a lovely photo of you and the President of the United States at the White House. Well, thank you, Matt. Thank you. Yes, the president got to shake my hand again. Once again, lucky guy. No, it really is something. It was at the White House Science Fair. So no matter how you feel about this administration, they are embracing young people in science for economic reasons. I spoke with John Holdren, the science advisor. Everybody

there is concerned about the future of the economy, and they want innovation. They want new ideas. And so they're supporting young people who have won various science contests around the U.S. It was cool. I mean, these kids, Matt, who are these people? A new way to detect cancer using nanotubes, a way to get fuel oil out of algae with a technique that kind of involves pesticides instead of DNA sequencing. It's really an amazing thing. Those are just two examples. And then the other thing that was really good for us at the Planetary Society,

I sat in front of Charlie Bolden, call me Charlie, the head of NASA. And I talked to him about policy and planetary exploration, planetary science. And the Planetary Society's got this thing. We're one and a half billion a year, US, billion dollars for planetary science. And we want the guidelines to be the decadal survey. And I think he got it. Anybody who wants to learn more about this can do so at planetary.org slash SOS. That's what it's your homepage, everybody. That's what the Planetary Society talks about. It's Save Our Science campaign, planetary science to be specific. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye, the science guy. Up next,

our last visit to the Planetary Defense Conference and an exciting simulation of what could be doom for the planet Earth. It's Friday, April 19, the last day of the Planetary Defense Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. We've already enjoyed hundreds of talks and posters. We've welcomed 900 members of the public to a special show. And many of the conference attendees have visited nearby Meteor Crater. Now they are about to take on a challenge few of them have faced. Each has been given a handbook that lays out a truly chilling scenario. A huge near-Earth asteroid

has just been discovered. If it passes through a keyhole in the sky during its next encounter with our planet, it will definitely hit us on the following pass with disastrous effect. That's unless humanity can deflect it or take other action. Many of the 200 or so participants in this so-called tabletop exercise have spent years studying various aspects of this scenario, but it has never before been presented to them in such a realistic and disturbing simulation. Leading the exercise is Debbie Lewis of Axiom. She has worked with U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Peter Gerritsen, top NASA officials and experts, and even the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, to create a back story that

begins unfolding in the very near future. DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Leader, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF DEBBIE LEWIS, Axiom Research Center, USAF near future. Yesterday afternoon we were at 2016, then this morning we were at 2019, then we're going to go to 2022. This is the complexity, you know, like near-earth objects, exercise planning is a dynamic environment too. Absolutely. So then what I'll do is I'll bring everybody

back and say, OK, now I need you to present your recommendations to your political authority, and then we'll have a hot debrief at the end so that people can talk about the scenario and people can talk about the exercise itself and and the machinations and the mechanics of it so I'm really quite pleased because they all seem to be sort of quite engaged what I'm doing at the moment is I've put together in addition to the the main injects about the recommendations that we're asking people to make on resources, equipment, personnel, that sort of thing, what they would need in an ideal world in order to respond to this asteroid. What is an inject?

Ah, an inject is basically an additional piece of information or a question, so that it may not be relevant for all the organizations, but it's one that's been written specific for their group. So it's a wrinkle that is thrown into the challenge? Yes. One of the things, I don't think the conversation will run dry. I don't think the debate will run dry. It doesn't look like it. But you can never be sure. So I have a few sort of things in my back pocket.

I've really enjoyed it. It's been a superb opportunity to have volunteered my services to write this. It's probably been one of the biggest challenges of my career. Well, and perhaps a learning experience for you, but perhaps even more so for them, because these guys are used to talking about these issues in an academic way. You've suddenly presented them with a situation that I suspect is starting to feel very real. I think it is. And certainly looking around the room, the engagement,

and this is the thing, it was absolutely key that this scenario had to be real. And it had to be as realistic as possible because otherwise you always need to have an element of artificiality in any exercise. But I couldn't afford for any effects of the asteroid to be artificial. And I'm really pleased because it has actually hit the spot and it's set the hairs running and the imagination running and certainly people were talking about the exercise last night

and were quite apprehensive about it but certainly the beginning of the conference when I was starting to meet all the delegates as they were coming through they all said to me, we're so looking forward to this exercise we're really excited about it I hope more organisations, I won't say wake up to this roedd nhw'n dod trwy, roeddent i gyd wedi dweud wrthi, rydyn ni'n edrych yn fawr ar y gweithgaredd hon. Rydyn ni'n hynod o gyffredinol amdano. Rwy'n gobeithio bod mwy o sefydliadau, dwi ddim yn dweud bod yn gweithio i'r peth, ond yn dod yn gwybod bod yna ffyrdd iawn iawn,

ond mae'n o fewn ein gallu i wneud rhywbeth amdano. Ond gallwn ni ddim wneud rhywbeth amdano os ydym ni i gyd yn gilydd. Ac mae'r cynllunio am ddod i'r ddodd, ddod i'r ddodd Neo-Impact, yn angen i ni ddechrau nawr. Ac mae gweithredu yn rhan o'r broses for an event, a neo-impact event, really needs to start now. And running exercises is really part of that process in order to start putting a policy together.

Well, right now we're in the thick of it, and you are in demand. I better let you go. Maybe I can catch you again later. Absolutely, of course. Thank you very much. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you, Matt. Bill Ehler of the Aerospace Corporation is one of the central organizers of the Planetary Defense Conference and this exercise. Many of you heard me interview him about orbital debris back in March of 2009.

Standing with Bill, looking over the increasingly tense discussions underway, is Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL for the last 15 years. Don was just named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. I told Bill how impressed I was by the energy and enthusiasm in the room. I know it's wonderful, isn't it? I'm very pleased about that myself. There seem to be a lot of ideas being thrown around and people are engaged. It's wonderful. Don, have you ever been through something like this? We have actually. This is the third tabletop exercise that we've been involved with, but it's

the first one that has so many people who usually study a single area, and now they're being asked to take a look at areas well outside their own expertise and provide advice. So a lot of people are stretching their brains here this morning. Well, and it's always been, I'm sure, very academic for most of these people, maybe not so much you, Don. But now, even though everybody knows this is just an exercise, they're really treating this as if, oh, my gosh, our planet's in danger. That's exactly right. And we even have a table representing the general public,

which is a very interesting perspective as well. So I'm expecting some good input here. It's going to be great. Don, how important is this in all of what we do basically to protect the planet? I think this is extremely important. It gets out the holes where we need more work. It gets out to the public some of our communications. Are they working? Are they not? Are people completely confused? And if so, why? And so the next time, we'll do a better job. Thank you, guys. Sure. Bill Ehler and Don Yeomans at the

Planetary Defense Conference Asteroid Emergency Response Tabletop Exercise. Also watching the action was Lindley Johnson. Lindley is a program executive at NASA headquarters and another of the tabletop exercise planners. We wanted to give them a scenario that would really stir things up and get them really talking to each other and considering some aspects of dealing with the threatening asteroid that maybe they hadn't thought of. I was just talking to the FEMA assistant director

who said that they started working with you guys at NASA two, three years ago. That's right. When OSTP put together a group of agencies. OSTP? OSTP, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Sorry, in D.C. speak. Office of Science and Technology Policy put together a group of agencies to pull together the responsibilities and actions to be done for NEO threat mitigation that Congress asked for a couple of years prior to that.

In the case of NASA, we were clearly given the mantle for the threat detection and warning of any hazardous asteroid that could be an impact threat. All right, so now in this scenario at the moment, we know there's going to be an impact somewhere over North Africa, Europe, maybe as far north as London. Does NASA now bow out, or what is its role in this situation that may not affect North America? I think we would certainly not bow out. The U.S. and NASA see themselves as a leader in the world community for dealing with space matters, and we would certainly be lending whatever expertise and aid or even doing the missions if that was the consensus that the international agencies wanted us to do. So we would not be bowing out at all. We'd be in the thick

of it with everybody else. So this kind of transcends national borders, or one would hope. Yes, absolutely. This is certainly a hazard threat that the world community needs to come together and think about how we save ourselves as a species. They weren't the only astronauts at the Planetary Defense Conference, but Ed Lew and Rusty Schweikart were almost certainly the most involved. Rusty was Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 9, while Ed lived on the International Space Station. They have much more in common than their former profession. They lead the B612 Foundation with plans to launch Sentinel, an infrared telescope that will discover and track near-Earth objects, or NEOs,

like the relatively small asteroid that was unknown until it exploded last February over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Steve, I'm going to start with you because you have been sounding the alarm on what this conference is mostly about for such a long time. Do you get some reason for optimism out of the kinds of presentations you're hearing here? I would say yes and no, mostly yes. The level of understanding, that is the depth of understanding, is much, much more evident, is much better, and it's evident in the presentations that are being made.

The breadth of it in terms of the number of people participating and the student population coming into it who are doing excellent work, it's all good reason for optimism. On the negative, on the downside is that in terms of the big picture of really being prepared for anything that might happen near time, this is, this has a bit of an academic character to it, which is certainly good for understanding, but in terms of readiness, we're not seeing a lot of real motion. So that's the place where I'm a little bit disappointed,

but on the whole, I think this is very good. It's excellent. Ed Liu, I want to get your take on that, since you were, what, just a few days ago in front of a Senate committee giving testimony on this topic. Yeah, just like Rusty, there's some really good aspects to this conference. I think world awareness, not just here, of the issue is certainly much heightened after Chelyabinsk. And so I think people are beginning to appreciate, you know, as I told somebody else, there's nothing like 100 YouTube videos to drive home the point that this is real, right? That being said, I still see a lot of folks discussing projects that could happen off 20 years from now

or that might someday get funding and maybe we could do something about this or we've got money to work on something that once you find asteroids will be really an interesting project. But in the near term, what we all really need to focus on is how do we find asteroids? How do we track them? How do we track them accurately enough to know what's a threat? I know it's the cornerstone to all of this later work.

And I see, unfortunately, at least here, 90% emphasis on the things we'll do once somebody else finds the asteroids. And 10% on, let's find the asteroids that are a threat. And that's what the B612 Foundation is doing. We're working on the crucial first step, and I think we're the only group doing that in a serious manner right now. This is a bunch of technologists, engineers, scientists, who are going to be wrestling with this issue, and the contrasting national interests which are going to really be there in the United Nations in a decision of what do we do and when do we do it is going to be absent. But thank heaven that that's absent.

You made a comment, though, about this yesterday, that this is a really important element that's not getting enough attention. Absolutely. But the geopolitical world moves glacially slow compared with a group of engineers and scientists who run their computers, you know, whatnot. And they can get answers pretty fast and they form opinions pretty fast. The geopolitical world has got so many things on its plate that it hardly is aware of this program except for a few people who have taken responsibility. But that's going to be the tougher part and this exercise tomorrow, while it will be interesting, is going to be a very simplified version of reality when it comes right down to it.

Some of these people have to start building these geopolitical models on their supercomputers. You've heard the phrase that if you want ten opinions, ask five politicians, right? Right. Okay, where are you guys? What's the status of B612 and your very ambitious plans? We're working towards our second of our eight milestones, with the eighth milestone being the actual lighting of the rocket and going up into space. It's the point at which each of the systems is designed and architected out, and we'll reach that point by the end of this year.

Any prediction on when that first Sentinel might be up there looking for these rocks with our names on them? Launch date is July 20, 2018, right now. And it's a six-and-a-half-year operation period after the launch, so that will give us 90% of the 140 meter objects and 40 to 50% of objects that will be about the size of Tunguska in the inventory after that six and a half years so that's going to come very close to what you might term completeness for the total threat that humankind actually faces

so it comes down to got to find them and track them before you can deflect them. Exactly. Or not just deflect them, if you want to visit them, if you want to do any kind of scientific exploration where you go out to them, you've got to know where it is, right? And so what I tell our big donors is that there's a chance that the project that they're funding, that they're funding, that they are personally supporting, is the most important project on Earth. You won't know until it's all over, right?

But it really has that possibility. Even if it doesn't find an impactor, although the probability of that is actually quite high, that it will actually find something sizable, more than just a shooting star, a Chelyabinsk-sized asteroid, there's a pretty good chance that it will find one of those. But even if it doesn't, it's sort of a seminal moment in human history in that we will now be on the path towards protecting our planet. First steps, got to find them.

While there's a high probability, a significant probability, that we'll find one that will actually impact if we don't do something in those six and a half years. We will definitely, without question, find many objects in that six and a half years which will be of great enough concern that decisions are going to have to be made by humanity on what to do. Much like the scenario that we're seeing being played out at this conference. It's not only the ones that are going to hit, but it's the ones that look like they might hit that you're going to have to really pay attention to. And we're going to find lots of those. So it will change the world, as my boss says. So eloquently, yes. Thank you so much, guys. And

best of luck in this ongoing effort to save the world. Thank you very much. Ed Liu and Rusty Schweikert. The small group discussions continued all over the floor of the Planetary Defense Conference. Our own Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's Director of Projects, participated in the gathering that focused on media and risk communication. There'll be pretty evergreen information that you can keep up. What's an asteroid? What's this asteroid? What's its orbit? Et cetera, et cetera. And then there are going to be things...

As you go through. Right. So, you know, taking my example, the Planetary Society would have that information up, a primer, all the time. A lot of these groups would. Clearly the agencies would. And then there are the things that are changing, like the development of the mission and the debate between countries or what we do. The Planetary Society's role is to get out good information.

It's not about us providing, somebody authorizing them. They already have authority because of their own expertise. Right. So there's a lot of internal reliance built on those organizations. So I imagine something like the United Nations would have to decide where they're going to get their information because they're not an authoritative body on this matter out of the gate. The exercise continued to evolve as the morning wore on. Debbie Lewis stepped up to the microphone once again to move us further into the future and closer to our encounter

with the killer asteroid. You'll also hear Paul Chodas. He works with Don Yeomans in NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office. Ladies and gentlemen, the year is now 2022. And I'm going to hand you over to my colleague, Paul Chodas. This is a briefing to the United Nations now, because this is getting more and more serious. The probability that the asteroid will impact the Earth is now 100%. We know for certain that it will go through the keyhole.

Going through the keyhole means hitting the Earth. The risk corridor has now shortened, and it is approximately a few thousand kilometers long. I'll show that in a moment. But there is still large uncertainty on where, along the risk corridor, And it is approximately a few thousand kilometers long. I'll show that in a moment. But there is still large uncertainty on where, along the risk corridor, the impact will occur. The risk corridor is now over Europe. A few minutes later brought this announcement of an even more troubling development.

I have just been advised, I've been informed, that the impact mission, the mission, the launch mission for deflection has failed. That news hit the participants like, well, like a meteor. Here's what I overheard in the group that included Rusty Schweikert. I'm afraid I couldn't help joining in. All three of our missions failed, is to launch a nuke. All three of our missions failed, is to launch a nuke. But we still need our observer there, because the standoff mission still gives us that same, that still applies after the nuclear standoff explosion as well. If we go with the nuclear with the very idea that they've been talking about in Iowa State,

there won't be any pieces. There'll be lots of pieces. There will be lots of pieces. There will be small pieces. Well, we're going to have to talk to them, but I would assume that we're going to give the decision makers an option that they can push it with a standoff and still deflect it, or they can try to blow it to smithereens with a big guy. I mean, they're basically, unless, is God around?

No, God's not here. Would one of you guys go get God? We need an answer. You don't need God, you need Bruce Willis. Oh, out of here, media. Oh, out of here, media. In the end, we learned that all efforts to deflect or fragment the asteroid had failed and that it would impact in the Mediterranean, not far from the French coast, where several nuclear power plants are based. It was a sobering and very affecting climax for the tabletop exercise,

which was, of course, exactly what Debbie Lewis had hoped for. Debbie, well done. Thank you, Matt, very much. You're going to have a whole bunch of scientists going back to their labs, their telescopes and so on, as I said to someone else, with a very different aspect on this challenge that we face that they are studying. Well, absolutely, And I think this exercise has provided them with an opportunity or an insight, a valuable insight into the wider perspectives that are represented in response to this scenario. So on that basis, then we've

achieved something that at least they can see that they're not working in splendid isolation, that there are other groups, other organizations organizations other people who require that information and particularly the issues that it's raised in terms of risk communication how do we communicate effectively to members of the public in a way that they will understand but equally how do we engage with our political community and the decision-making community so we can provide them with the recommended options in order that they can to respond to the hazard, but they ultimately need to make the decisions and the issues that they need to be mindful of. So where should this group go from here as a group?

As a group, I think very much it will be used to inform the other agencies, the other organizations who are completely unfamiliar, unaware, with what the scientific community is doing equally needing to understand what the UN is doing, the various space agencies and equally one of the things I've recognised and oversight from my perspective is that we need industry

here and again it would be lovely to have another exercise whereby we can use this as a starting point and we can involve the political community. That would be, if I had a magic wand, if somebody said to me, Debbie, if you could make a recommendation,

what would you like to do? Then very much, I want to get this on the agenda so that the political community can start decision-making now. And equally, they might turn around, understandably, why would we bother about something? Why would we take Senate time, debate time, parliamentary, political time, discussion time on something that might not happen and could happen, say, in 20 or 30 years' time? The thing is, what you want to do is a bit like a relay race.

You want to start the process so you have something to hand over. What I would hate is somebody like me, a risk manager, in, say, 20, 30 years' time, walking the same path that i have walked i want to hand over this is where we've got so far this is a process and you carry it on so it's a constantly evolving iterative process that develops as we go on so we don't have various starting points where people retire and you know sadly leave the the mortal coil, that type of thing, you know, that it carries on, that we're not starting from scratch each time. That's my main concern.

And if we can start the ball rolling, if you like, the process, get the momentum going, then we can start to put an effective plan in place. I think you and your team have certainly done that. It was a thrill just to be a witness to all of this. And I hope we see you in two years at the next Planetary Defense Conference. So do I. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. We'll give the last word to one of the most active participants in the tabletop exercise. You may remember Kathy Plesko from her performance

as one of our Planetary Defense Conference public event panelists two weeks ago. She creates complex simulations of asteroids and impact scenarios on the supercomputers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Kathy, I was watching you in action during this exercise now complete, and let me just say that I think I want you on the executive committee when the real mitigation effort takes place. Oh, thank you so much. There are simulations that you deal with all the time with zeros and ones. And then there are simulations like this with this major human factor. What are your observations? This is a lot different. When I sit in my office, it's quiet.

The procedure is orderly and I have weeks to come up with an answer. At this point, I have to go back to school with pen and paper and units and orders of magnitude and say, OK, it's going to be more than this but less than that. And, OK, what do you think, Livermore? And what do you think, representatives of Russia? And coming to that consensus, the physics and the math really dominate that answer, but the human element, the emotions, the politics really still matter.

And that's something we don't necessarily learn in graduate school. Did it come as a surprise to you? I mean, really, there was so much passion on this floor. There was. It was amazing. Everyone was dedicated to their answer, to getting the best answer, and making sure that something unforeseen wouldn't happen. It was really intense. And not a few disagreements.

No, not a few. We went back and forth a lot, and trying to do math by interpretive dance because we had a lot of language barriers, which is only going to be worse if you have this multinational effort that you have to have. It was intense. I want to see that dance on stage. Do you think there were new ideas that surfaced here, even among people who've been thinking about this stuff for years? There were new ideas that surfaced here. There was an element of unpredictability where countries went rogue and decided to do their own deflection options and didn't tell us what their mission

looked like. And so we had to figure out as a black box, okay, what would I do if I was them? What do we think they did? And then take that into account in our mission planning. And then, yeah, we had new ideas for our missions in ways we would change the geometry. And then we got to take that through all of our trajectory planning programs and take that to people who do this for a living and have Rusty Schweikart, who's an Apollo astronaut, check our numbers. It was great. What other lessons will you take away from this and what do you hope the rest of these folks will take away? I learned a lot about communication today and about just how fast this is going to work. I hope everyone here learns

that we really do have to keep each other in the loop, and that's going to be hard to do in ways that our governments are okay with. Social media will certainly help, but we have to be able to talk to the media. We have to be able to talk to our governments. We have to be able to do both of those in a way that's going to make the other two happy.

And we have to be able to talk to each other in real time and convey really complicated scientific ideas in a matter of a couple of minutes. Let's hope we have a few years yet before we have to do this for real. Amen to that. Kathy Plesko, closing out our coverage of the Planetary Defense Conference in Flagstaff, Arizona. I've posted lots of pictures of the conference and the climactic asteroid emergency response tabletop exercise. You'll find a link on the show page at planetary.org slash radio. What's Up is next. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars.

This is taking us our next steps in following the water and the search for life to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from, and are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do, and together we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business.

You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org. I hope you'll check it out. Time for a very special edition of What's Up here on Planetary Radio. On the Skype line with me is Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, but we also have some special guests who we're going to introduce in just a couple of minutes. Welcome, Bruce.

Thank you, Matt. All right, so in the night sky in the west, still Jupiter, quite bright, dominating the west. However, it will be getting lower over the coming weeks, so don't miss your chance to see it. However, it will be getting lower over the coming weeks, so don't miss your chance to see it. And Venus starting to rise after sunset. Look low, low in the west. You may or may not be able to catch it soon after sunset, but it is brighter than Jupiter, so eventually will be quite impressive. And on May 11th, if you can get a view low enough to the horizon in the west,

the moon is actually between Jupiter and Venus. You should at least be able to see the moon and Jupiter. And if you can look lower, you might have a chance of seeing Venus. We've also got Saturn coming up in the east in the early evening, looking yellowish. Also, if you happen to be hanging out in the neighborhood of Australia, in the South Pacific, Indonesia, even Hawaii. You can check out a partial solar eclipse on May 10th. And if you're in just the right place in parts of Australia and the South Pacific, you get an annular solar eclipse May 10th. Move on to this week in space history. It was 10 years ago the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa was launched.

And after many adventures, returned samples from the asteroid Itokawa to Earth. The little mission that could, Hayabusa. Okay, we are going in now to our usual random space fact segment. But to do that, we're going to welcome those special guests that I mentioned. On the Skype line with Bruce and me are Mike Puzio. Joining him is his dad, Larry. Guys, are you there? Yes, sir.

Yeah. Thank you very much for being part of this. Mike, I especially want to congratulate you because your name for that asteroid just got chosen. That's now the official name of an asteroid. You must be pretty excited. Everybody actually has been practically, all their attention has been focused on the asteroid being named. I think that's true. Bruce is director of projects. You've been all over this competition. Could you give us a little background? Sure. The OSIRIS-REx NASA mission will

be headed off to do an asteroid sample return, launching in 2016. The asteroid that it's headed to has been named 1999 RQ36. The project, not surprisingly, was looking for something a little bit easier to say and use for the next 10 years of the mission. So they partnered with us at the Planetary Society, a project led out of University of Arizona. And we partnered with the discoverers, Grant Stokes, who is out of MIT's Lincoln Labs. And we ran a contest, a competition for school-aged children to name the asteroid. We got over 8,000 entries, and Mike had the winning entry with the name Bennu, named after an Egyptian deity tied to the heron. He likened it to the look of the spacecraft as it goes with its solar panels

and then reaches down to the asteroid, named Bennu to collect a sample. Nice work, Mike. How did you come up with that name, Bennu? Well, my dad found it on the Internet. He looked up on Google, Osiris-Rex, and then lots of things about Bennu came up. Were Bennu and Osiris kind of buddies or something? came up. Were Benu and Osiris kind of buddies or something? Yeah, they actually were because Benu

is actually the Egyptian phoenix. Oh, okay. Well, one reason why is because in Harry Potter, Fox, Albus Dumbledore's phoenix is a phoenix

and... You love Harry Potter. Mm-hmm. And also, it's the Greek version of, well, guess what? A phoenix. That's great. Listen, I'm not surprised to hear that you're a Harry Potter fan. Larry, you must be a proud dad. I'm very excited.

It's amazing. He's a good boy. He certainly sounds like it. And it's a very, very good name. Just perfect to go with this mission out there, to grab a little piece of Bennu and bring it back here. Guys, we're going to move on with our random space fact, but Mike, I'm hoping that you can help us out a little bit. Would you introduce it for us? What does moon dust smell like? That's your random space fact, but you have to ask

them. You have to say the name of each segment. Oh, yeah. Random space facts. Okay. So what does Moondust smell like? Wasted gunpowder. You know, I have actually heard that. Bruce, are you familiar with that? I've played with Moondust and

taken infrared spectra of it, although I was encouraged not to sniff it because it's kind of precious. So you can't actually confirm this, but I have read this. I buy that. It certainly has that smell of certain crushed rocks on the Earth that can be likened to used gunpowder. Well, Mike, I hope that we can talk to you again. Maybe we'll do that. We'll have plenty of times, because as Bruce said, this is a 10-year mission.

But maybe when OSIRIS-REx gets launched, starts its trip out there to Bennu, the asteroid that you've named, and there's an excited dog who wants to be there as well. Oh, very much. Larry, if it's okay with you, we'll talk again before long. We'll certainly want to talk

when Osiris Rex reaches Bennu. Wait, there's one thing I would like to tell you. Please do. It's that you can look up on Lego... Lego website. CUSO. C-U-S-S-O-O.

B version. It has a picture of a Lego Osiris Rex. No kidding. And only three supporters. So they need more support. You've just given them a nice little boost there so people can visit. You said it's the Lego website? Lego CUSO.

Every listener to this program, I'm sure, is running to the Lego website right now. They're dashing over there. Guys, I'm going to ask Bruce if he's got a random space fact for us. I do indeed. The surface gravity of a neutron star, so the gravity at the surface of a neutron star, is about 100 billion times the surface gravity on Earth. That is pretty good. How's that for a random space fact, Mike?

Well, but isn't that... That would crush us. Yeah. It definitely would. Most people don't even know that. Well, that's why we gave them a random space fact. Bruce, let's go on to the contest. All right.

We asked you who was the pioneering planetary geologist who did the first detailed mapping of Meteor Crater and definitively proved its impact origin as well as being instrumental to proving the impact origin of most of the craters on the moon. How do we do, Matt? I'm going to zip right into our winner here. And it's a past winner, John Gallant. John Gallant of Lima, New York. He won just like six months ago, got a Fisher Space Pen from us. This time he's getting Bill Nye's voice on his answering machine

because his answer was that in 1960, Eugene Shoemaker confirmed that it was an impact crater. That is correct. And, of course, Gene is who we've named our Shoemaker-Neal grants after that we recently announced new winners. Now, I should point out that a number of people also put in the name Daniel Berenger, which, of course, is the other name for media creator, Berenger. But I guess he didn't confirm it.

He just said, he just theorized. He hypothesized, right? Right. So he definitely played a significant role. But it was Gene Shoemaker who came along and did the detailed geologic mapping, found the shock versions of quartz that you can only get from an impact, and really proved out the details. Just one other entry to mention here.

Our friend David Kaplan, who sent this in. I'd forgotten about this. Gene Shoemaker may be the only human buried on the moon. His ashes were carried on the Lunar Prospector mission, which is pretty cool, I would say. Wouldn't you say, Mike? I hope I would be buried on the moon. Not Mars?

I would hold out for Mars if I was you, Mike. Yeah. That's actually a better idea. Bruce, have you got one for next week? I do. Just a straightforward name, the five largest moons in the solar system. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to enter.

What are we giving away, Matt? I think we're going to stick, because those new t-shirts still aren't ready. We're going to stick with Bill Nye's voice on somebody's answering machine. To get that, they're going to have to get us their entry by the 13th of May. That's Monday, May 13 at 2 p.m. Pacific time. So, Mike, listen, you can enter if you figure out who the five largest moons will get you. You can win yet another contest. Not quite as great as naming an asteroid, but not bad.

You get Bill's voice on your answering machine. Though I bet we could arrange that for you and Larry regardless. I you want to point out people can find out more information about Mike and the winners and the contest and the other finalists at planetary.org slash name. Hey Bruce. Yes. Do you know where I can find the answer?

Oh, you have to research. Gotta do some homework. Yeah, you'll have to do your own research. There are a lot of places from tables for this question. You can always resort to Wikipedia and Google, but there are tables of planets and there are tables in books, all sorts of places. This is an easy one, Mike. You should hear the one he asked last week. We won't even go into that.

Listen to the radio show. Listen, we got to go. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about lapel pins and why they're not bigger. Thank you. Good night. Mike, do you think lapel pins are about the right size or should they be bigger? It's a little pin a grown-up wears

on a suit. I don't know about that. No strong opinion one way or the other from Mike, but he sure knows how to name an asteroid. That's Mike Cusio with his dad Larry and Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the watchful

members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies.